Why Does Video Work?

What is the one goal of a great landing page? We simply want visitors to take action.

That action might be a service sign up, newsletter subscription, follow your blog, complete a contact form, or even a purchase.

But first… before that action happens, you must establish trust and expertise with your audience.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to establish your expertise is to use video content. Video is a popular medium and has a great return on investment.

When used correctly, video easily demonstrates or improves:

Expertise

Trust

Information Conveyance

Conversion/action

Communication

Eating? or Being Eaten? Decide Now!

According to psychologists, we human beings are stimulated by the pairing of both sight and sound. Our attention and focus are heightened while watching video content. Early programming from our hunting days forced us to pay attention to movement and noise for survival. We are also hard-wired to search faces for recognition.

In other words, when seeking trustworthiness and opportunity, site visitors gravitate to video.

According to this study “Videos in the C-Suite” by Forbes Insights, work-related video drive action and video is more easily shared socially between colleagues.

Consider the reasons:

Quick Summary of essential message.

More entertaining

Easier to view on a mobile device

Easier to understand content

More Meaning, Faster

The human brain processes images immediately, but language is decoded much slower.

Visual information is processed 60,000x faster than language. We also detect emotional nuances like sarcasm or humor that are often overlooked in text. By observing gestures, tones, and images in a video we actually process social and emotional information more deeply which creates bonding feelings and gives a greater understanding of concepts.

This greater understanding helps viewers learn more about your company and helps to influence their decision to purchase or trust you. 64% of viewers watch videos to learn more about companies. 96% find videos helpful when deciding to make purchases online.

Other Video Tips

Limit copy on your page – The more choices your visitors have, the longer they take to make a decision. Of course, we preferred one action, watch the video. The goal is conversion, so let them do this as easily as possible without having to sort through a load of information.

Optimize videos for SEO – It is far easier to reach the first page of Google search results with video than a webpage. There are a few reasons:

Most Businesses are not optimizing their videos correctly.

Competition for video is surprisingly low, especially by businesses.

Keep in mind that it is essential to research and create clear keywords, titles, and descriptions for each video so the content is clear to both viewers and search engines.

Also, by creating a video-specific sitemap (easy in WordPress), Google will be able to easily find and index your videos.

These steps can boost your SEO and greatly increase the likelihood of your landing pages being found.

Keep it Short and Sweet – Videos longer than 90 seconds have a much higher “drop off” rate than videos of 30 to 60 seconds. Simply put, the longer the video, the shorter the rate of engagement. Viewers will watch about 81% of a 30 second video, but will average only about 62% of a 90 second video.

Place Top and Center – Videos located on the top and center of landing pages consistently outperform videos anywhere else on the page, especially the bottom of the page.

When A/B testing for location a properly placed video (top and center) has a 32% higher conversion rate than a version with the video located on the bottom right of the page.

The belief is when visitors see a video that is top and center, (which mirrors YouTube’s positioning), they feel the video will inform and entertain. Conversely, videos in the bottom right are associated with advertising and get far fewer views.

Add Post-Roll Call-To-Action and Animation – In additional testing, producers are discovering that adding post-roll animation to a video on landing pages created a conversion lift of over 86%. For example, employing a moving arrow that points visitors to a “subscribe” link makes the desired action extremely clear.

Final Thoughts

Videos grab attention, are easy to understand, and make it easier to connect to a business on a personal level. This makes it pretty easy to understand why many visitors prefer to watch a video than to read text.

Do you have to be funny? Does it have to feature cats? Luckily, no.

Potential customers watch instructional, product, and service videos as much as humorous content. Remember, your ultimate goal is to get the visitor to take action. Keep it informative, genuine, friendly, and simple.

Have a look at the Alpine animated video, Effect Web Design in 90 seconds to see many of these ideas in action.

Alpine Internet has been a trusted guide for web development, design, marketing and operational strategy since opening our doors in 1999. We strive to create a long-term relationship with each client, where creating a web site or app is just the beginning.